Stephen Bainbridge's Journal of Law, Religion, Politics, and Culture

Music

02/09/2017

Among many reasons I crossed the Tiber back in 2001 was the prevalence of praise music in Protestant churches here in Los Angeles. I had an instinctive reaction against worship services that seemed more like rock concerts (not, of course, that I'm against rock concerts, but there is a time and a place). I was thus struck by this passage from John O'Malley's wonderful history of the Council of Trent, Trent: What Happened at the Council:

Embedded in the decree, however, was a sentence exhorting the bishops to “keep out of their churches the kind of music in which a base and suggestive [lascivum et impurum] element is introduced into the organ playing or singing, and similarly all worldly activities, empty and secular conversation, walking about, noises and cries, so that the house of God may truly be called and be seen to be a house of prayer.”

I'm not saying all Protestant churches are like that, of course, but it was in large part a desire for traditional High Church liturgy that sent me to Rome.

01/16/2017

There's a game of tag going on in my FB TL that asks one to identify ten albums that influenced you during your teen years (defined as 71-78 in my case). No more than one per band. You hopefully still love all of them and, at the very least, none make you cringe.

Born to Run-Springsteen

Who's Next-The Who

Madman Across the Water-Elton John

461 Ocean Boulevard-Eric Clapton

Aja-Steely Dan

Boston-Boston

Live Bullet-Bob Seger

The Stranger-Billy Joel

Give Em Enough Rope-The Clash

Exile on Main St.-Stones

CSNY's Deja Vu just missed the list because I was 12 when it came out in 1970. Darkness on the Edge of Town missed the cut because I could only pick one per artist. Lynyrd Skynyrd's (Pronounced ‘l?h-’nérd ‘skin-’nérd) missed the list because I loved it then but now it just sort of annoys me. Ditto anything by Elvis Costello. I never liked Dylan, Pink Floyd, most punk bands, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young as solo artist, or Fleetwood Mac, which knocks out a lot of options.

03/06/2015

I like to have music or the TV on in the background when I'm working. Today I'm working at home and there's an Eric Clapton documentary on Palladium. Right now they're doing an acoustic version of Layla. I am very happy.

11/25/2011

Rolling Stone has a new list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of all Time, updating their 2003 list (HT: Joyner). In fact, however, updating is clearly the wrong word. As James notes:

The magazine’s 2003 list was radically different. ... What, precisely, did Eric Clapton do over the last eight years to move ahead of B.B. King and Duane Allman? More importantly, what did King and Allman do to get bumped out of the top 5 by artists whose best work was long behind them by 2003? What did Jimmy Page and Keith Richards do to move up 6 spots each? Or Jeff Beck 9 spots?

But James overlooks what seems to be the biggest change of all: Pete Townshend rises from 50th on the 2003 list to 10th on the 2011 list:

Pete Townshend doesn't play many solos, which might be why so many people don’t realize just how good he really is. But he's so important to rock – he’s a visionary musician who really lit the whole thing up. His rhythm-guitar playing is extremely exciting and aggressive – he's a savage player, in a way. He has a wonderful, fluid physicality with the guitar that you don't see often, and his playing is very much a reflection of who he is as a person – a very intense guy. He's like the original punk, the first one to destroy a guitar onstage – a breathtaking statement at that point in time. But he's also a very articulate, literate person. He listens to a lot of jazz, and he told me that's what he'd really like to be doing. On "Substitute" you can hear the influence of Miles Davis' modal approach in the way his chords move against the open D string. He was using feedback early, which I think was influenced by European avant-garde music like Stockhausen – an art-school thing. The big ringing chords he used in the Who were so musically smart when you consider how busy the drumming and bass playing were in that band – it could have gotten chaotic if not for him. He more or less invented the power chord, and you can hear a sort of pre-Zeppelin thing in the Who's Sixties work. So much of this stuff came from him.

Here at PB.com, where The Who are firmly ensconced as the Official World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band, we're pleased to see Pete getting his due.

We were also interested to note that Bruce Springsteen, PB.com's Official World's Greatest Rock and Roll Singer/Songwriter/Live Act made the list at #96. We are pleased .. but surprised. Bruce's guitar playing is often unappreciated in our experience:

Bruce Springsteen has always had a not-so-secret weapon: "I got signed in the pack of new Dylans," he told Rolling Stone, "but I could turn around, kick-start my Telecaster and burn the house down." Springsteen didn't make any technical breakthroughs on guitar, but few players are better at coaxing emotion from steel and wood: witness the surf-rock recklessness of the "Born to Run" solo, the junkyard-dog bite of "Adam Raised a Cain" and the melancholy twang of "Tougher Than the Rest."

09/24/2011

I think it's fair to say that my three favorite albums are Who's Next, Born to Run, and Quadrophenia. Mark Judge recently posted a great article on the latter:

Quadrophenia is a work of genius. I am tempted to write that today's music is shallow compared to records like Godspell and Quadrophenia. But that falls into an argument that I disagree with -- that big, ambitious records about Life are always superior to simple pop music. To me, songs about cars and girls are not shallow; rather, the best of them deal with elemental questions of joy, love, and suffering.

Yet it can't be denied: Quadrophenia is on an entirely different level than anything out today.

09/14/2011

After more than a year of writing and recording, Bruce Springsteen released his 18th studio album Tuesday, a concept record titled Red Dust that explores the everyday lives and struggles of immigrant workers scraping by in the 23rd-century carbonate mines on Mars. ...

"These are songs about growing up on a tough planet," said Springsteen, telling reporters that when the idea of humans and aliens working side by side in an extraterrestrial labor colony first occurred to him, he immediately knew he "had to tell their story." "The Martians aren't trying to run away from their lives or make excuses. They're proud of what they do and where they're from, even if the high-impact ion-compression carbonate mining industry isn't what it used to be." ...

Thus far, the album has earned mixed reviews. While many critics have expressed deep bemusement at Springsteen's sharp departure from realism, others, such as Rolling Stone editor David Fricke, have hailed the effort as "another well-executed and stirring tribute to working-class heroes by the Boss."

07/28/2009

07/25/2009

Given the incomparable definitiveness of Jimi Hendrix's version, I would think it takes an enormous amount of chutzpah for any band to tackle All Along the Watchtower, but I just came across a version by Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and the E Street Band that very nearly pulls it off:

04/14/2009

There I was sitting in my office peacefully preparing for class and listening to Who's Next, when one of my senior colleagues wandered in and asked: "When are you going to grow up and give up that rock crap?" I was sitting there wondering the same thing when one of my junior colleagues wandered by a bit later, stopped, listened for a moment, and asked: "Boy, you really like that old shit, don't you?" And then he too wandered off. Ah, the joys of being a late Boomer in middle-age, caught between Scylla and Charybdis.